Gentlemen: declare your agenda

There are a couple of indignant people replying to my and others’ comments on Charles Freeman’s reply to James Hannam at the New Humanist. They are indignant about my claims about the Templeton connections and possible agenda of some of the historians who write about Science ‘n’ Religion. One uses the pseudonym “Thiudareiks,” which is Theodoric in Saxon or Old German or something, so I don’t know anything about that one. But the other is one Humphrey Clarke, who…

has a long admiring review of the very book at issue at a blog called Quodlibeta, or Bede’s Journal. Who else blogs there? Why…

113 Responses to “Gentlemen: declare your agenda”

Ophelia. Humphrey is the gentlemanly one. If he doesn’t do the trick Hannam’s crew send in the heavies in the shape of one Tim O’ Neill. This is what is open for all to see if you access James Hannam’s Facebook and find the sections in which he mentions my critique.

Tim O’Neill. Are you going to respond to ol’ Charlie, James? Because I think I may. And I won’t be kind. Perhaps it would be best if you replied and then I could go in with the “Chainsaw of Whithering Sarcasm + 10 Against Prolix Idiots”

I made a crack somewhere about whether modern science arose because of Christianity or in spite of Christianity and Humphrey jumped on it like a hyena on a dead wildebeest – something about Lynn White blah, blah, blah. I was only trying to point out that Christianity has no ecological basis – no tenets on respecting nature. It isolates humans from nature – which is why many Christians are able to deny evolution and climate change.

I get the feeling people like James presume science is good and so want to claim it for Christianity. Would he claim “bad” things with roots in the middle ages for Christianity?

Ohhhhhhh – well that clears that up, Charles! I saw a Tim O’Neill while googling Thiudareiks, but couldn’t be sure it was the same one. Good to know that it’s concerted and planned and out in the open.

I always attributed the “The Church Promoted Science During the Dark Ages” narrative to the catholics rather than Templeton, but it could be both.

And there is a Tim who is an ardent catholic apologist who claims to be an atheist for street cred on atheist websites. This faux-atheist credits the catholic church with not only the advancement of science but also as the engine of the Enlightenment, and he relentlessly bashes any actual atheist that attempts contradictory comentary.

BTW, I read (but have no cite, sorry) that certain religious organizations employ a key word search program that notifies them when internet postings are made that might warrant their response. If true, this would explain how when discussions on the Dark Ages occur, apologists so quickly appear on the threads to defend the church’s revisionist version of history. I’d be interested if anyone else has heard of this.

For some reason, the comments are not coming up on the New Humanist wesbsite on my computer ,so I missed the lively exchange there until I caught up with it here.

O’Neill runs a semi-redundant (no new postings since May) website called Armarium Magnum. No surprises that a certain God’s Philosophers is given a five star review and a certain Closing of the Western Mind a two star review. In the ensuing discussion of the latter in which I got some support, O’Neill showed the quality of his academic mind as follows:

‘And if anyone pops their head over the Freeman parapet and tries to defend his crap, please let me know. I’ll be primed and ready to kick the living shit out if it.’

It is a comment I treasure.

If you want to see how the team works, go to Amazon.co.uk and look up Hannam’s God Philosophers and its reviews. One Iain Mott was unwise enough to give it a two star review. The first response was,surprise, surprise, from one Humphrey Clarke. When Mott refused to back down, in comes one Tim O’Neill to do the heavy work. I am glad Mott held his own! God’s Philosophers fails on academic grounds alone ,which is why I have tried to keep the debate at that level, but there are murky waters here too. Thanks goodness the Royal Society judges did not give it their prize- they would have been humiliated when all this came out, as surely it would.

On Templeton. Take a book that acknowledges that it has Templeton Foundation backing, ;Galileo Goes to Jail and other Myths about Science and Religion, edited by one Ronald Numbers, Harvard University Press (!), 2009. Among the authors of essays are Messrs. David Lindberg, John Hedley Brooke, Jon Roberts, Peter Harrison, Ronald Numbers and Michael Ruse. Take the Cambridge Companion to Religion and Science and you find as editor Peter Harrison from the Templeton-funded Ian Ramsey Centre in Oxford ( part of the Faculty of Theology) and essays by every one of the above named.I shall have a more detailed read of it but there does not seem to be a single essay that argues for the incompatibility of religious and scientific approaches to knowledge. So it should not be in this normally excellent series. Shame on Cambridge University Press for not issuing it under Theology.

Clarification of the above. The Cambridge ‘Companion to . .’ series is a very successful attempt at providing introductions to key thinkers and periods of history. I have several on my shelves and often when i am in the Cambridge UP bookshop I see many more that I would like. The scholarship is sometimes conservative but i have found the ones I have invaluable. As for this title, The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion,anyone with any background in philosophy or the history of Christianity will know that there is a wide range of issues about the compatibility of science with religious belief. So one would expect a book with this title to explore these. However, one finds that virtually all the essays are by Christians on Christianity. Even here one must give full space to the significant proportion of Christians, creationists and intelligent designers, who hold views with conviction,that are clearly unscientific. As numbers of these appear to be growing,it is surely a key issue. Then one must give full space to those who would see religion and science as essentially incompatible in philosophical terms. Perhaps the best way of doing this would have been to have allowed a response to each essay from those who disagreed with its arguments. Then we would have had a book which was truly valuable. I have only read the Introduction by Peter Harrison so far but he makes it clear that the main argument of the book is that religion and science are compatible and he talks strangely of ‘scientifically -motivated’ people who believe otherwise, as if they were some sort of enemy. Surely an editor is meant to take the subject as it is stated in the title he has agreed to edit and to allow all shades of academic opinion. In fact, I judge an editor mainly on this criterion – his main job is to encourage variety and debate within the overall context of high academic standards for each article. I shall read further but so far as i can see this is essentially a book by a group of like-minded theologians (several of whom seem to operate in a cluster in other books) who distance themselves from the significant number of creationists who share their religion as well as those who are essentially ‘scientifically -motivated’. ( Of course, one would never imagine that any of the distinguished contributors have any motivations of their own!). So it belongs firmly in the Theology section of Cambridge’s catalogue and not in the Companion section where we can expect books which fully explore the subjects that they have as their title from any angle that has academic credibility ( as the arguments against the compatibility of science and religion certainly have).

Yes exactly Charles. I noticed when I first spotted the book at the local university bookstore a few weeks ago that all the other Cambridge Companion titles mentioned on the page dedicated to that purpose, are explicitly religious – so CUP is tacitly admitting (or just saying) that it’s a religious book – yet the unwary would not know that from the title (where, as always, science comes first…) or the intro or anything else. It looks like a secular academic book but in fact it isn’t.

I would love to know the inside institutional story of how this Companion came about – who commissioned it, who chose the contributors, etc.

Charles you should review it for the Guardian or the Times or the NYRB or some such.

Yes, if you bought it online, having read only the blurb Cambridge UP provide, you would never know that had such narrow and biassed perspectives. When I was an Examinee for the international Baccalaureate’s Theory of Knowledge course, we just expected the students to know after a year’s course, the problems of reconciling certainty in the sciences with religious claims. It should have been unbelievable to our examinee that a book with this title did not cover the whole philosophical spectrum, especially when it claims to be comprehensive. Can these people, contributors, editor, commissioning editor, not see outside the box?

I occasionally go to lectures at the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge and I am amazed at what i sometime hear there. It seems that theologians are given no training in subjects such as mainstream philosophy, history,etc. But that is why ,in Britain at least, no one takes any theologian seriously- they have simply placed themselves outside serious intellectual debate. (Not that some of their opponents are much better!)

I have Galileo Goes to Jail out of the library, but as I hadn’t opened it yet, I didn’t realize it was a Templeton book. I suspected it was an in the box book though, which is why I grabbed it when I spotted it on the shelf.

” ”Thiudareiks,” which is Theodoric in Saxon or Old German or something”

Given that “Theodoric” is a Latinaisation of the name of a Goth, it probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that Thiudareiks is the original Gothic form, not ” Saxon or Old German or something”. Looks like Ms Benson, who is apparently “a history graduate”, didn’t really research that one for too long. Too busy trying to bolster her latest conspiracy theory I suppose.

“It’s the same Tim O’Neill. He used to be all over the Richard Dawkins forums. He did make some valid points, to be fair,”

Hooray for me! Not bad for a “Catholic apologist”

” … but the Enlightenment argument Locutus mentions above was a huge overreach.”

Can someone “enlighten” me as to this “Enlightenment argument” I’m supposed to have made? I thought I was pretty familiar with all my arguments and this one eludes my memory. Still, maybe the Vatican mind control rays that manipulate me to oppress poor “freelance scholars” who are bravely exposing the idiocy of leading academics like Lindberg, Numbers and Grant (all Vatican dupes as well, vis the Templeton Foundation apparently) have wiped my memory. Speaking of which:

“BTW, I read (but have no cite, sorry) that certain religious organizations employ a key word search program that notifies them when internet postings are made that might warrant their response. If true, this would explain how when discussions on the Dark Ages occur, apologists so quickly appear on the threads to defend the church’s revisionist version of history. I’d be interested if anyone else has heard of this.”

Yes, I’ve heard of it! I heard of it on PrisonPlanet.com or BeyondTopSecret or maybe one of those sites about how the world is controlled by shape-shifting reptilians. But if you put on your tin-foil hats you’ll be safe from the Holy Inquisition’s apologist alert beacons! No, really!

Or you could all take a few much-needed deep breaths and think RATIONALLY for a moment.

Yes, whereas calling someone who has been a card-carrying atheist for 25 years a “Catholic apologist” because he’s saying things you don’t like is, what – polite? It sure as hell isn’t rational.

“It’s good that you’ve emerged from the silly pseudonym”

I use “Thiudareiks” on Discus because someone else has already taken the handle “TimONeill”. Given that “Tim O’Neill” and the name “Thiudareiks” are associated with each other all over the net, it would hardly be much of a cover if I had something to hide.

There’s another thing about you, Mr O’Neill: you have said repeatedly on the NH thread that I have not backed up my claims. That is not true: I have repeatedly pointed out the post here in which I document them. It is not honest to keep repeating that I haven’t.

“The “Catholic apologist” is in comment #6; it has nothing to do with either Charles Freeman or me.”

I didn’t say it was. But given that gibberish like this is being burbled here, I’m hardly going to be all sweetness and light in response.

” It’s not clear that it applies to you”

Given that I was the only “TimONeill” on the Richard Dawkins forum and I remember a “locutus7” from that forum as well (one who persistently clung to quaint Nineteenth Century positions on the history of science) it’s actually perfectly clear.

No, it isn’t; Locutus’s comment simply said there is a Tim. Furthermore the point is not just what is clear to you, it’s also what is clear to others; the fact that you remember a Locutus obviously doesn’t mean that anyone else will make the connection.

Well, I’m partly the subject of this thread so I should probably give my 2 cents. I’ve addressed the ‘guilt by association’ comment elsewhere and I have no great desire to revisit it. We should all probably just take a deep breath and move on.

Just in response to Mike Fulgate – I think I remember the conversation though it was some time ago. I don’t remember it being that heated – perhaps initially – but I think I raised Lynn White Jr because it was he who believed that Judeo-Christian theology was fundamentally exploitative of the natural world. That sparked a whole debate about issues such as Genesis in the original reading being about stewardship or domination. The second point you raise is a very important one. For me Science is an ambiguous legacy giving us both the wonders of modern medicine and the horrors of Hiroshima. So for modern day Christians to claim the prize of modern science in an apologetic seems to me at least to be wrong headed.

Despite this some have actually have claimed that Modern Science is a Christian invention – it’s known in academia as ‘the Foster thesis’. I think the most decisive refutation of this is Noah Efron’s chapter in the aforementioned ‘Galileo Goes to Gaol and other Myths about Science and Religion’ which I recommend (I see Ophelia already has a copy).

I do remember Ian Mott too. I thought it was a pretty civil discussion. He had some misconceptions which I was happy to clear up and he thanked me for ‘such a great set of comments’. Now you will note that the conversation I had with Ian was in November 2009. The discussion between Tim and Ian – where he was sent in to do the heavy work – took place in August 2010, almost a year later!!!. If that is supposed to be some kind of co-ordinated response to rough up reviewers then it it’s pretty poor.

“No, it isn’t; Locutus’s comment simply said there is a Tim. Furthermore the point is not just what is clear to you, it’s also what is clear to others”

Well, I have just made it crystal clear to everyone – I am the Tim O’Neill he was talking about. And whether it was clear to anyone else is irrelevant, since it only had to be be clear to ME for ME to take offence at such a ludicrous and pathetic slur.

“The discussion between Tim and Ian – where he was sent in to do the heavy work – took place in August 2010, almost a year later!!!. If that is supposed to be some kind of co-ordinated response to rough up reviewers then it it’s pretty poor.”

The Vatican’s mind control rays must have been intercepted for a while Humphrey. Seriously, this batty conspracist nonsense about some kind of co-ordinated vendetta against Freeman or whatever is simply deranged. People with similar interests intersect on the net all the time. I have an interest in the early Germanic peoples and regularly come across the same people on different parts of the net when discussing them. Yes, James and Humphrey and I know each other and agree on many things. We disagree on many more – religion in particular. This is hardly surprising, given James is a Catholic and I am an atheist (to be honest, I have no idea what Humphrey’s religious views are). But we have studied the Medieval period in general and Medieval natural philosophy in particular and are well aware of the consensus of scholarship on the latter.

So when we see quaint rearguard actions by polemicists like Freeman trying to defend the old Victorian “Conflict Thesis” of course we are going to note his errors. I’m likely to do so with more vehemence because, as a rationalist, I have a particularly intense dislike of so-called “rationalists” clinging like fundamentalists to outdated pseudo historical doctrines instead of analysing history objectively. Freeman is a repeat offender in this regard, as my detailed review and critique of his The Closing of the Western Mind makes very clear.

I have done nothing to keep Closing of the Western Mind selling these past few years. I have seen two mentions of Hannam’s review on the net in four years, one of them suggesting my response should be read as well. I have never heard anyone even refer to O’neill review and one can hardly be surprised by this when he writes in such a vitriolic way. Meanwhile apparently intelligent and well-informed people seem to find it an interesting and useful book and some even write very careful and thoughtful reviews of it for all too see.

So when we see quaint rearguard actions by polemicists like Freeman trying to defend the old Victorian “Conflict Thesis” of course we are going to note his errors.

Well, isn’t that strange. The old Victorian conflict thesis seems to be alive and well in the Vatican, since lately they have been doing everything possible to conflict with secular government, evolutionary biology, as well as any reasonably scientific view of the world. Sure, there’s a Vatican observatory, and an intrusive Vatican scientific presence — the kind that claims that the Nobel committee is completely out of order to award the medicine Nobel for someone who pioneered in vitro fertilisation, or that holds pregnant women hostage, or spreads rumours about the ineffectiveness of condoms. How many more mindless things do we need to cite before it becomes clear how, even now, the church is in conflict with reason and science? And so just what is it about the conflict thesis that is old and Victorian? It really is getting tiresome to deal with all the revisionist historians who want to roll back the hands of the clock and are willing to play the atheist card in order to do it. But religion is still in conflict with science. There is not a shred of religious belief, whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim, that is consistent with the findings of modern science. Please enlighten us all. There is bound to be conflict, as there is between the recent tendency of the RCC to take exorcism seriously. Is this simply old and Victorian too?

To earlier post. I have never been aware of any organised vendetta against myself. I know of two people who blog against me on occasions (no names!) with no discernible effect and lots of people who come into contact with me on Amazon -see the reviews there- or come to my lectures or generally write in and are always interesting to deal with. In fact, I never expected to have had so much intellectual pleasure as i have had meeting and communicating with the people who have enjoyed Closing and my other books. Everyone just seems to know that i am interested in the issues for their own sakes and they respond to that. I just hope I will have the chance to write another book that arouses so much interest. It is quite extraordinary that James Hannam and Tim O’Neill think that anyone pays attention to them. I think that in the case of Tim he has shown here, for the hundredth time, why he is not taken seriously. It’s tone, Tim, tone.

Humphrey, I replied to your recent(ish) reply to me on the NH thread – mostly agreeing with it. I do agree that Templeton connections don’t necessarily mean that the historians in question have been corrupted or influenced. I think the Templeton money influences the debate overall, in ways I explain in that reply.

Funny about Noah Efron’s chapter. I picked up the book about half an hour ago, and leafed through it, and read a bit of Efron – and thought: well, they have at least one dissenter; well done.

” It is quite extraordinary that James Hannam and Tim O’Neill think that anyone pays attention to them.”

The Google results seem to indicate that quite a few people pay attention to our critiques of that tendentious and sloppy work Charlie. Google “The closing of the western mind” and the first link that comes up is James’ review and the fifth is mine. That would explain the thousands of hits my review has had.

” I think that in the case of Tim he has shown here, for the hundredth time, why he is not taken seriously. It’s tone, Tim, tone.”

Where I come from Charlie, a spade is called a spade and a piece of tendentious polemic is likely frankly identified without prissy prancing about. And those who want to preach about “tone” should have a look at some the crazy nonsense in this thread – everything from me being a Catholic to a secret internet “key word search program” run by the Vatican to the Catholic Church opposing evolution. What sort of “tone” does that kind of frothing gibbering engender Charlie? A “rational” tone do you think?

everything from me being a Catholic to a secret internet “key word search program” run by the Vatican to the Catholic Church opposing evolution.

Huh. I don’t recall anyone but Locutus saying either of those things (or explicitly agreeing with them), and he hasn’t been back since. I’m not entirely sure why you’re still vehemently defending yourself from accusations that only one drive-by commenter has shown any interest in.

I find it extremely difficult to take someone seriously when they appear unable (or unwilling) to realize that all their “opponents” on a thread are different people who may speak only for themselves, and may have substantially different interests and positions in the conversation.

What sort of “tone” does that kind of frothing gibbering engender Charlie? A “rational” tone do you think?

I actually don’t have a problem with your tone at all (I’m rather amused but mildly pleased that Ophelia has not booted you), but I think this is an odd “fighting words” style of argument. It sounds like a mere excuse to get riled up with defensiveness or (in your case) righteous indignation.

The nonsense about the Vatican opposing evolution came from someone called Eric MacDonald. And whether the crazy “key word search inquisition” theory came from Locutus or not, both it and the feeble slur about me being a “Catholic apologist” pretending to be an atheist isn’t exactly going to make an atheist and rationalist like me look kindly on the “tone” here.

“It sounds like a mere excuse to get riled up with defensiveness or (in your case) righteous indignation.”

I think being accused of being a liar makes my indignation pretty damn righteous. And if Ms Benson “boots” me for objecting to vile slurs then that would be a sad indictment on her, not me.

Oops, I meant to cut off the quote before that. Anyway, Eric said that the Vatican conflicts with evolutionary biology, not “opposes evolution” (in fact, I’m quite certain he realizes that the Church allows for a sort of theistic evolution). I don’t know what he meant by his statement; perhaps you could ask him rather than dismissing it out of hand as “crazy nonsense”?

both it and the feeble slur about me being a “Catholic apologist” pretending to be an atheist isn’t exactly going to make an atheist and rationalist like me look kindly on the “tone” here.

More “fighting words” stuff. I know you feel very justified, but it seems rather immature. Again, the fact that Locutus made a single comment that was largely ignored doesn’t seem to bear on anyone else, no? The issue isn’t merely the righteous indignation, but the fact that there’s very little other content to your posts, just egotistical rambling about how people here are conspiracy theorists and not true rationalists, and some other straw man stuff that seems to be a grab for the moral high ground. It would make for a good tedious soap opera, but I’m not sure what value it has other than to try to escalate this into high drama.

Or, more succinctly, constant defensiveness and polemic makes you sound like a troll.

“Again, the fact that Locutus made a single comment that was largely ignored doesn’t seem to bear on anyone else, no?”

I made it clear which lie I was reacting to. But we still have this nonsense about how Humphrey and I are part of some cadre of organised defenders of something or other and this total garbage about how the Templeton Foundation has the leading historians of early science in their evil thrall.

As a rationalist, I treat that kind of gibberish as the nonsense it is. And for this I’m now called a “troll”. It seems unless one bows to the common opinion around here one gets called all kinds of interesting names.

And for this I’m now called a “troll”. It seems unless one bows to the common opinion around here one gets called all kinds of interesting names.

Funny, I thought of what I was saying as criticism someone could legitimately react to, perhaps by demonstrating that they could communicate differently from the manner I was describing, or revealing a constructive point that I’d somehow missed. Note that I didn’t call you a troll, but I said that you sounded like one, which if anything is an invitation for you to prove that my perception of you was wrong. I said you seemed immature because I think that you are acting immature, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t conceivably calm down and deliver a more clear message that I could respect.

This is a strong (but not surprising) indication that I was wasting my time.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that (i) evolution is teleological, and (ii) that the human soul is not a product of evolution, but is “injected” into the human being at conception (presumably). Both of these claims are in conflict with the theory of evolution. This is not nonsense. It is the simple truth.

“The Roman Catholic Church teaches that (i) evolution is teleological, and (ii) that the human soul is not a product of evolution, but is “injected” into the human being at conception (presumably). Both of these claims are in conflict with the theory of evolution.”

The Theory of Evolution does not and cannot have anything at all to say about teleology, let alone “souls”. What the Catholic Church does to embroider around the edges of evolutionary theory may be nonsense, but it isn’t contradicted by any science. So the claim it is in conflict with evolutionary biology is pure nonsense.

This must be the twentieth Tim O’Neill debate I have come across and, believe me, I don’t go looking for them. In every case, Tim O’Neill blows whatever interesting things he might have to say by his tone and polemic. He seems totally obsessed by my Closing of the Western Mind even though it came out eight years ago and I have published several books since then. Has he no one in his life who can quietly take him aside and tell him that he does himself much more harm than good by his rants? But perhaps he really does believe that thousands of people have read his review of Closing and have been totally won over by it. I don’t understand how the Google rankings work, perhaps the number of hits he claims to have are himself logging on and rereading it to himself.Just a thought.

What the Catholic Church does to embroider around the edges of evolutionary theory may be nonsense, but it isn’t contradicted by any science.

Sorry Tim, that is as lameass as it gets. Claiming human exceptionalism is in fact to contradict the findings of science. Supposing that, in the case of human beings, evolution is directed to a specific end, namely, us, and that there is a strict biological distinction between human beings and other life forms on this planet, is in contradiction with all that is known about homo sapiens sapiens. You may think that tagging something onto the end of the theory is not a contradiction, but that is as much as to say that intelligent design is not in conflict with the theory of evolution. The claim to human exceptionalism is groundless. The claim that human beings are in some sense a special creation is a negation of the theory of evolution. It doesn’t get much more contradictory than that.

Add to this the silly claims about demon possession and exorcism that keep the church looking like Rip Van Winkle, having bypassed centuries of scientific progress, inserting a fundamentally medieval world view into a contemporary coversation, and it begins to look less like embroidery. Even if you say there is no contradiction, the methodology of dogmatic assertion is in direct conflict with the methods of the sciences. To claim that the church can embroider like this around the edges of science, and yet claim that there was no closing of the Western mind when this kind of dogmatism was in control of the main instititutions of Western thought for over a thousand years, and punished those who disagreed, is a contradiction in terms. Surely, even though you are bellicose to a fault in conversation, even you cannot miss this.

Picking up the discussion from the other article (I find the comments there really hard to read).

‘I do think it warps the field as a whole, because it funds one view of the subject and not the other, and because it gives a veneer of respectability to some institutions and centres by locating them in Oxford and Cambridge.’

I do have some reservations about the Templeton Foundation; Jack Templeton’s support for proposition 8, the whole question of tax evasion etc. Having said that I think on the whole they improve the quality of the debate. They support individuals whose work I admire and I don’t get the impression there is any coercion. There’s nothing wrong in principle with funding positions within Oxbridge like say the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion. After all Richard Dawkins was given a boost after Charles Simonyi endowed the Simonyi Professorship for the Public Understanding of Science.

‘The work of the historians is not unversally highly regarded though. The line they take is more contentious than that, and than they tend to acknowledge’

I don’t know about that. Perhaps it would be good to talk specifics? As an example, you’ll note in Galileo Goes to Gaol that the first two chapters address the myths that ‘The rise of Christianity was responsible for the demise of Ancient Science’ and ‘That the Medieval Church suppressed the growth of science’. The authors are Lindburg and Shank – both are the co-editors of the forthcoming ‘Cambridge History of Science – vol 2 Medieval Science’. You would expect their views therefore to be pretty mainstream. John Hedly Brooke is known as the slayer as the Conflict thesis and his ideas are now pretty well established in the history of science – they have been for at least a couple of decades.

The authors are Lindburg and Shank – both are the co-editors of the forthcoming ‘Cambridge History of Science – vol 2 Medieval Science’. You would expect their views therefore to be pretty mainstream.

What a curious way of determining what is mainstream! It is true that one would have expected a Cambridge history of anything to be somehow impartial between conflicting viewpoints, but there is no assurance that this will be so. Indeed, given the amount of money that Templeton pours into the project of giving the religious voice in contemporary debates about the relations between religion and science a larger footprint in published space, there is no reason for supposing that the views expressed in such a publication will be somehow ‘mainstream’ (whatever that means).

Jason Rosenhouse did a review of Galileo goes to Gail earlier this year (here). While in fact generally positive, he does point out some surprising anomalies. For intance, “Myth # 8” is that Galileo was imprisoned and tortured for advocating Copernicanism. Rosenhouse’s comment:

As philosopher Maurice Finnochiaro tells the story, Galileo was only threatened with torture and imprisonment. He actually suffered nine years of house arrest, the forced recantation of his views, and seeing his book banned. Take that Church bashers!

Actually, according to the theory, as Esther Cohen points out in her paper, “The Animated Pain of the Body” (The American Historical Review 105, no. 1 (2000) pp. 36-68), “Jurists distinguished five degrees of torture, of which the first consists only of fright and threats.” (p. 50) Showing the instruments of torture was the first stage of torture, and house arrest, as we know from the long house arrest of the Burmese dissident Daw Aung San Suu Kyi shows, is real imprisonment. It is simply silly to try to exonerate the church by making slight of these things. Galileo was tortured and imprisoned, and the church used the instruments of torture and held the keys. If this is an argument that there was no conflict between science and religion, then it fails miserably, and as a mainstream view it clearly is in the wrong century.

A few pieces of bad editing, but I have lost too many posts through using the preview button, so I have stopped using it. I think, for all that, what I said still makes enough sense, even though I conflate ‘gaol’ and ‘jail’ and got ‘gail’.

I wouldn’t want to exonerate the church – far from it. But when we talk about Galileo’s torture and imprisonment we have to be clear what it was because there was so much later embellishment. That is the ‘myth’ that is being addressed.

When he was summoned to Rome for trial he was imprisoned but this consisted of being allowed to lodge in the luxurious Tuscan embassy and not being allowed to socialise. There is one point one could argue for mental torture. Galileo and the inquisitors agreed what today would be considered an out of court settlement in which he would plead on a lesser charge so he presumably would have suffered limited mental anguish before this. The trial should have ended there but Galileo’s former friend Pope Urban doubted the sincerity of this plea and he had to be subjected to the formal threat of torture. The transcript indicates that Galileo was threatened with torture but was not actually tortured, and that he was willing to be tortured rather than admit his transgression to have been intentional.

He received an initially hash sentence which was then commuted to house arrest at the Tuscan Grand Dukes Palace in Rome, the residence of Siena’s archbishop and the his own villa in Arcetri. The conditions were harsh but he was allowed dispensations to leave the house within 30 miles, continue to receive his pension, receive visitors and go to San Marco see his daughters. As you point out, his book was banned but he was still able to publish his most important contribution to Physics ‘Two new Sciences’.

Galileo has also be caught up in the grand narrative of modern man freeing himself from the shackles of faith. However the Catholic Church was not opposing science per se. It was used its authority to endorse what was then the consensus of the scientific community. This course of action we can now see was totally wrong-headed but it didn’t come from any intrinsic antipathy towards science on the part of the Roman Church. There were religious figures and scientists on both sides of the debate.

What a curious way of determining what is mainstream! It is true that one would have expected a Cambridge history of anything to be somehow impartial between conflicting viewpoints, but there is no assurance that this will be so

There is no assurance, you are right but these type of projects are not typically revisionist. What would you say is a better way of determining what is mainstream?

These debates usually get nowhere because they centre on such minute issues. You get microscopic discussions as to what exactly did or did not happen to Galileo usually on the lines of ‘His science was a bit ropey anyway, he was a bit of a nuisance and the Church was unbelievably tolerant of him in the circumstances ( and even, well he was threatened with torture but he wasn’t actually tortured so that is all right then)’,’.but no discussion of the names/works on the Papal Index of Prohibited Books that was being published at the same time and how far this was related to the intellectual stagnation in Italy that (undoubtedly) followed. So Myth II ‘That Catholics Did Not Contribute to the Scientific Revolution’ in Galileo Goes to Jail, by one Lawrence Principe contains not a single mention of the Papal Index, and ,in fact, the Index does not seem to have had a reference anywhere in the book.Yet with the entire works of 550 authors in the first edition of 1559, it marked the almost complete suppression of independent thinking in Catholic countries where it was enforced. The problem with books controlled by the Templetonians is that this very obvious fact, something that every mainstream historian working on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries just takes for granted, is completely left out.

Similarly there is a discussion over whether halls containing books were burned in the (undoubted) sacking of the Serapeum in Alexandria in 391. It is something that can never be known and apologists argue there is no evidence, from this one instance alone, that Christians were intolerant of pagan learning. Yet there is no discussion of the mass of archaeological evidence for widespread destruction of paganism across the eastern empire at the same time. This is the danger when the Templetonians control the terms of the debate and it has to be watched out for.

I made the second point in a blog on the issue in the Christian First Things. One Linda L replied as follows:

Gosh, is that really Charles Freeman chiming in? The famous popular historian, celebrated for his historical errors, philosophical ignorance, and anti-Christian animus? What an honor to all of us. His Closing of the Western Mind is an absolute monument to spurious scholarship.

Another one to treasure, but it does raise the issue of why these conservative Christian apologists are their own worst enemies. No one could possibly take this seriously as an academic response , any more than they take Tim O’Neill’s stuff seriously (and why Hannam has not seen this and ditched him I can’t imagine). I had a very interesting discussion the other day with a very prominent liberal church historian on why there is a correlation between conservative Christians and high levels of abusive behaviour. He had just had some vitriolic material thrown at him (not least by a virtually household-name conservative professor of church history) for including a very interesting article that was mildly critical of so-called Christian scholarship in a journal he edited. We could not come to a conclusion! All this stuff never worries me because it is always at a school boy level but it is an interesting phenomenon.

It [the Roman Church] … used its authority to endorse what was then the consensus of the scientific community. This course of action we can now see was totally wrong-headed but it didn’t come from any intrinsic antipathy towards science on the part of the Roman Church.

Endorse?! Don’t you mean enforce? In the light of the Index of Prohibited Books, which Charles Freeman has mentioned, as well as decisions of the Council of Trent, which somehow gets lost in the shuiffle here, and the whole Counter Reformation phenomenon — which has been given new life by the present pope — it is silly to speak of the church as in any sense supportive of the scientific enterprise. Evenually, of course, it could not ignore what was going on in science — though it clearly thought, when it condemned Galileo, that this was just a passing phase — but the suggestion that this makes the church even remotely supporting of science is a bit risible. After all, the church continues to intervene in the scientific project to try to minimise the damage that it can do to the church’s more intemperate beliefs — such as the continued belief in miracles (via the saint making process), demons, and human exceptionalism — but this is more in the nature of damage control, rather than genuine support for or participation in the scientific project. The same can be said for the revisionist account of Galileo’s condemnation. It’s curious, I have never been told — and I am 69 years old — that Galileo’s condemnation and punishment were more serious that you state, and apparently Galileo Goes to Gaol reaffirms. The supposed myth is not so much of a myth after all. But, after I had already pointed out that, according to medieval jurists, showing the instruments of torture was the first stage of torture itself, it hardly does to claim that

The transcript indicates that Galileo was threatened with torture but was not actually tortured.

Galileo was tortured to the first degree. Can you yourself imagine (Mr. Clarke) what it must have been like for a man of Galileo’s age to be shown the instruments of torture, knowing that the next step, should he make the wrong one, would have been the use of those instruments? The degree of self-delusion involved in the suggestion that Galileo was not, after all, tortured, is really quite staggering, and the amount of implied exoneration of the Church’s tyranny in that suggestion is deeply troubling. It was not only wrong headed, it was cruel and unjust. If this is mainstream history, then we’d better get history back on track, don’t you think?

Hi. I’m back. Just curious, how do you apologists know about these discussions? Are you in fact notified by a software program that the church’s position is being challenged on the internet, so you can be deployed to defend The Church’s position? Or is it pure chance that you appear on a discussion thread whenever someone attacks a Church position?

And let me add, in general, that I’m no historian, but one can not help but notice the concerted effort, in print, TV, and on the internet, of some individuals (frequently afiliated with religious schools or organizations) to rehabilitate the role of The Church in the Dark Ages.

The Catholic Church clearly accrues a benefit in the sanitizing or recasting of its war on science during The Dark Ages and even the Enlightenment.

I don’t know whether the Church has taken an active role in mobilizing supporters among the various Catholic universities and so forth to spin history in a way more favorable to the Church. But it seems that way.

So for apologists to promote the idea that The Church has been, historically, a force for science and reason over faith, and then to cast doubters of that odd notion as clinging to quaint 19th century ideas, strikes me as a bit curious.

The authors are Lindburg and Shank – both are the co-editors of the forthcoming ‘Cambridge History of Science – vol 2 Medieval Science’. You would expect their views therefore to be pretty mainstream.

This is exactly my point – you would expect that, and as it turns out, you could well be wrong; cf. The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion. For that matter you would expect Galileo Goes to Jail to be mainstream-academic too, as it’s published by Harvard Press, and yet it is thoroughly a Templeton project – Templeton funded a conference for all the contributors. Templeton has a particular agenda.

That’s not to say that Templeton coerces anyone, or demands agreement with pre-determined conclusions. But it does, at least, foster certain lines of inquiry; it fosters them lavishly. This shapes the debate. It is at the very least worth trying to spot and keep track of how the debate is thus shaped. One way, it seems increasingly clear, is that it fosters a huge amount of revisionist scholarship on science ‘n’ religion, in ways that favor the view that the two are fundamentally compatible and that religion has mostly been a good friend to science.

This must be the twentieth Tim O’Neill debate I have come across and, believe me, I don’t go looking for them. In every case, Tim O’Neill blows whatever interesting things he might have to say by his tone and polemic. He seems totally obsessed by my Closing of the Western Mind

I am? Strange – I wrote a review of it over a year ago and haven’t commented on it since. I only bothered to enter this rather weird discussion when I discovered that I was being personally smeared as a Catholic apologist and fake atheist and when you were trying to make out I was part of some kind of anti-Freeman cabal. Sorry, but I’m not a fan of lies and distortions (as you should well know).

As for my tone, you can stick to your rather soporific, overly wordy style and I’ll stick to what works for me. Plenty find my style rather entertaining, though I admit they don’t tend to be those on its receiving end. Scathing critiques are required by bad polemic.

Can you yourself imagine (Mr. Clarke) what it must have been like for a man of Galileo’s age to be shown the instruments of torture, knowing that the next step, should he make the wrong one, would have been the use of those instruments?

I don’t really see why trying to establish a set of historical facts (whether Galileo was tortured and thrown in Gaol) implies I endorse torturing old men. Nor do I see why a verbal threat of torture is the same as torture unless you stretch the definition to breaking point. The showing of instruments you mentioned is something known as territio realis (real intimidation) Looking at the transcript – Fourth Deposition (June 21, 1633) – it looks like he was given a verbal threat instead – territio verbalis. Therefore it seems he was subjected to interrogation under the threat of torture – nasty and morally wrong but not torture itself. In practice the Inquisition authorities in Rome rarely practiced torture and the rules excepted old or sick people.

it marked the almost complete suppression of independent thinking in Catholic countries where it was enforced.

Charles that is an enormous generalization. There is a grain of truth to that in science when it comes to Copernican ideas and quasi atomist matter theories but it ignores – among other things – the contribution of Jesuit astronomy. Surely Roger Boscovich counts as an independent thinker ?

Therefore it seems he was subjected to interrogation under the threat of torture – nasty and morally wrong but not torture itself.

Actually under some laws psychological torture is decidedly included as torture. I think that’s true of the US military guidelines (which are notoriously not uniformly obeyed) and international law. I’ll look it up.

The prohibition against torture is absolute and, according to the Convention, no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, including state of emergency or war or an order from a public authority may be invoked as a justification of torture. “Torture” is defined as:

“… any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person…”

So it’s really not stretching the definition of torture to say that showing Galileo the instruments of torture was itself torture. That’s now the international definition.

Just curious, how do you apologists know about these discussions? Are you in fact notified by a software program that the church’s position is being challenged on the internet, so you can be deployed to defend The Church’s position? Or is it pure chance that you appear on a discussion thread whenever someone attacks a Church position?

Well, you see, our vast network of apologists includes evil hackers who have infested the computers of every brave anti-theist warrior in the world with powerful trojans. These alert Cardinal Fang and Cardinal Biggles in the bowles of the Vatican, who then pause in their molestation of altar boys long enough to dispatch albino monks to every corner of the globe, summoning we apologists and faux-atheists to do battle with such devastating weapons and references to books and the odd bit of sarcasm.

Alternatively, people who share an interest in early science post on a few boards and fors devoted to that subject and also tend to read some of the same blogs. After doing this for a few years some us also send each other the odd e-mail, which sometimes say things like “Hey, check out this link – you got a mention.” Or we simply see a thread on a forum or a link which mentions a discussion like this and some of us choose to join in.

Now, you’re apparently some kind of rationalist. So which seems more rational to you: (a) a Vatican computer program that alerts an army of brainwashed apologists or (b) people on the net talking about things that interest them with other people who share those interests?

Once I would have been amazed that I would have to point out the bleeding obvious to a supposed rationalist, but exposure to the anti-theist zealot fringe has convinced me that some rationalists can get distinctly irrational.

And let me add, in general, that I’m no historian, but one can not help but notice the concerted effort, in print, TV, and on the internet, of some individuals (frequently afiliated with religious schools or organizations) to rehabilitate the role of The Church in the Dark Ages.

Sorry to debunk your conspiracy theory, but all you’ve noticed is stuff that has been common knowledge to specialists in the field finally filtering down to the general public and replacing some hoary old Victorian myths about the Medieval Period. This “rehabilitation” which seems to be so startling to you is pretty ho-hum stuff to those of us who have been studying the period for years.

The systematic study of the Middle Ages is a relatively new field, as fields of history go. It didn’t really get started until the early Twentieth Century and so had several centuries of misinformation, anti-Catholic bias, post-Enlightenment myth and general denegration and bigoty to clear away, not to mention some romanticisation as well (eg the Catholic idea of it as a pious “Age of Faith” or some saccharine Victorian ideas about “the Age of Chivlary”).

But it takes a long time for the fruits of academic analysis to permeate the common consciousness at the best of times, and there are some who are emotionally and ideologically wedded to the many of the myths about the Medieval period, because it fits the neat post-Enlightenment narrative of the fall and revival of the ideal Classic world, with the Middle Ages as a grubby, priest-riddled interregnum that the human spirit overcame. This is a nice story, but it’s also a Whiggish fairy tale with heroes (the Classical world, so shiny and clean!), villains (the Medieval Church, boo hiss!) and a happy ending (the Renaissance and Enlightenment – we all live happily ever after!), but a cautionary note (we must defend the ideals of the Classical fairyland against the hobgoblins of irrationality!)

Fairy tales are nice for kiddies, but adults know things are a bit more complex.

Pardon? Locutus7 was under the strange impression that this “rehabilitation” of the Medieval period was due to some conpiracy. As a Medievalist, I assured him it’s just the wheels of scholarship turning as usual. How does this not add to what we’re discussing here? And this helpfulness (and to someone who lied about me no less!) is “obnoxious” how, exactly?

No, you’re the only one who has talked about a conspiracy apart from one commenter pointing out your harping on a conspiracy. That’s one of the ways you’re obnoxious – putting words in people’s mouths and then pouring scorn on them. And you have to stop saying people are lying, too. That’s libelous.

Because that is the best word to describe the rather far fetched idea that “some individuals (frequently afiliated with religious schools or organizations) [are trying] to rehabilitate the role of The Church in the Dark Ages” when all we are seeing is standard, long-accepted scholarship filtering down to the popular sphere.

Fairy tales are nice for kiddies, but adults know things are a bit more complex.

Yes, Tim, reading what you say, I have been thinking the same thing. Your fairy tale is nice for kiddies, but things really are a bit more complex than you would like them to be. And where the church is involved, it’s not only complex, but very nasty, and very messy. That’s what happens when you build your worldview on myth, and that’s really all that religion has going for it. It’s a nice fairy tale, but things are far more complex than that.

One thing seems very clear, and that is that the so-called common knowledge of specialists in the field is not yet common knowledge even to specialists. Religions do a lot of special pleading and that’s what the supposed consensus sounds like to me. You might say that that’s what theology is and must be, and so religions are reduced to a kind of intellectual bias and special pleading. What else can you do when you’re trying to demonstrate something which has no basis in our understanding of the world?

Of course, relgions themselves as institutional forces continue to have a lot of power, which, despite religious beliefs being empty of any real content, continue to dominate may aspects of the humanities, history in particular. That they continue to get up and dust themselves off from their encounters with reality is expected, so we continue to put up with a very strange shadow boxing from those who want to refurbish religion’s tarnished image. It’s a continuous process, just as apologetics is. That those engaged in the task should continue to make exaggerated claims for their point of view is also expected. But when the attempt is made to make the church’s encounter with Galileo — in which an old man was threatened with torture, and put under house arrest — into something perfectly understandable and innocent (from the church’s point of view), because Galileo was outside the scientific consensus of his day, then you know that religion is trying just a bit too hard, and the specialist consensus simply does not convince.

I’ve spent a lifetime in religion, and I know how it works, and how easy it is to hide reality from oneself. I see you Tim, and Humphrey, trying your damndest to hide from some obvious facts about religion and its crimes. You speak of a Victorian myth, and yet you ignore the fact that the Roman church issued its first Index of Prohibited Books in 1559, and kept issuing them until 1948. What the hell was that if it wasn’t a conflict between the church and learning, including science? Get real will you? How do you simply ignore that Index? It wasn’t abolished until 1966! And yet you are trying to say that the whole thing is a Victorian myth! And then add to that the nineteeth century Syllabus of Errors, and the Anti-Modernist Oath, and you have a long continuous confrontation between the church and secular learning. It’s simply idiotic to continue to ignore this and speak of Whiggish myths. At least there is some truth the Whig view of history, because by and large things have got better, and we are freer now than we ever were. Sadly, the church is still trying to pull us back under its spell, and it’s sad to see historians helping with the task. Yes, the story is much more complex than you think it is. Time to give up your fairy tales, and actually learn something, instead of trying to fit history into religion’s little box of toys.

One thing seems very clear, and that is that the so-called common knowledge of specialists in the field is not yet common knowledge even to specialists.

Really? It seems pretty much across the board to me and I’ve been studying the natural philosophy in the ancient and medieval periods for over two decades now. If there are specialists in this field who still believe that the Church suppressed proto-science and burned natural philosophers etc a la Draper and White of yore, who are they? Because the only people I see fighting a rearguard action against modern understandings of what really went on in Medieval natural philosophical inquiry are not specialists in the field at all, but amateurs like Charles Freeman. And he seems more motivated by an agenda than by a desire for sober and objective analysis.

Religions do a lot of special pleading and that’s what the supposed consensus sounds like to me.

So how do you explain the fact that the specialsts who make up that consensus include agnostics and atheists? Are they all unwitting dupes of the Vatican and the Templeton Foundation as well? Sorry, but this stuff is getting plain silly.

But when the attempt is made to make the church’s encounter with Galileo — in which an old man was threatened with torture, and put under house arrest — into something perfectly understandable and innocent (from the church’s point of view), because Galileo was outside the scientific consensus of his day, then you know that religion is trying just a bit too hard, and the specialist consensus simply does not convince.

Who is doing this? All I see is people trying to dispell some of the ideological myths about that complex affair and show that the black and white “religion = bad, science = good!” cartoon version is not very useful to a rational person who wants to understand history, not reduce it to caricatures that are then used as parables. I prefer my pre-modern history without a side-serve of moralising. To me the Church being horrible to Galileo for whatever reason inspires about as much rage in me as Henry VIII disembowelling traitors, the Romans crucifying rebels by the thousand or Assyrians flaying and impaling people. Outrage tends to get in the way of understanding. Outrage fueled by modern agendas doubly so.

you ignore the fact that the Roman church issued its first Index of Prohibited Books in 1559, and kept issuing them until 1948.

I’m sorry – I’ve “ignored” this where exactly?

What the hell was that if it wasn’t a conflict between the church and learning, including science?

I think you’ll find that I’ve never claimed the Church didn’t try to enforce some parameters when it came to ideas. Neither do the specialists I mention. If you want to debate me it might be an idea to get a grasp of what is actually being said.

My point, Tim, is that anyone who suggests that the idea of the conflict of religion and science is a Victorian myth must be ignoring the Index, the Syllabus and the Oath. This is the conflict in official church documents, and it extends from long before the Victorian period. So, yes, time to give up your fairy tales and face up to some simple facts. And comparing the church’s condemnation of Galileo with Henry VIII disemboweling traitors, Roman crucifixions, still doesn’t answer questions about the relationsship between the church and learning or science. These are simply misleading comparisons, and say nothing. By the way, since you’ve been studying this for so long, and are so knowledgeable about the field, would you please recommend one of your books in which these consensus views are expressed and confirmed.

I think the biggest problem is that modern science and it development may be largely indifferent to religion and Christianity in particular. This was my original idea at which Humphrey took offense some time back. (He can’t seem to spell my name correctly – I believe it is Huguenot in the original and I come from a long line of Europeans who ditched Papism at their earliest convenience.) Tim seems to think it is all about this good/bad thing, but it has to be more complex and is likely that the presence of Christianity in Europe was neither here nor there in relationship to science.

This was also my point in the exploitation thesis – although some vague ecological references are found in the OT, none (or nearly none?) exist in the NT. Christianity has no formal ecological ethos in its creeds. At least not any of which I am aware. Christianity is not necessarily for ecological exploitation, but it is indifferent.

Although I am heartened by Humphrey’s liberal views on science and society, I am afraid that many here in the states where I live would not find Hiroshima to be a negative mark on science. But Tim is just clueless when it comes to evolution – why can’t science say something about teleology and souls? We know that these just don’t exist – it is a fact. Talk about fairy tales from a person who keeps harping about rationality!

My last point is why – given what we know now about the influence of things like meditation, fasting, and psychoactive botanicals and mycologicals – we would view any of the supposed revelatory stories out of the religious literature as anything, but personal brain experiences. We know that priests and shamans of long ago used these tools to great effect to focus the mind and produce answers. Why would anyone now interpret these as encounters with the divine? Without a revelatory aspect, religion would seem to collapse.

My point, Tim, is that anyone who suggests that the idea of the conflict of religion and science is a Victorian myth must be ignoring the Index, the Syllabus and the Oath.

Not at all. You seem to have the wrong idea about what the term “Conflict Thesis” refers to. The rejection of the “Conflict Thesis” is by no means the maintenance of the idea that there has been no conflict at all between religion and science – because that would be an absurd idea. Of course there have been conflicts and we all know about many of them – the conflicts over heliocentrism, evolution etc are clear facts of history. The “Conflict Thesis” or “Warfare Model” don’t simply note these periodic clashes of ideas but rather posit that there is a permanent and comprehensive epistomological clash between religion and science. In other words, religion always opposes scientific developments as a matter of course.

And this simply isn’t the case. We have plenty of examples of religion and science rubbing along quite happily with each other – ancient Greece and Rome had religions that rarely intruded on natural philosophy, though the Greco-Roman taboos about human remains made dissection verboten and mystical ideas inevitably shaped some assumptions about the physical world. Even in the “terrible old Middle Ages” the parameters about what was “acceptable” for analysis by philosophers were surprisingly wide, which is why the cases of philosophers being hobbled by theology are few and tend to be about metaphysics rather than anything scientific. The reason this conversation keeps coming back to Galileo again and again and again is that there simply aren’t any other cases to discuss, which should in itself give the defenders of the “Conflict Thesis” pause.

Even more recent examples of conflict don’t help the “Conflict Thesis”. The fact that the Creationist/ID movements represent a (noisy) minority within modern Christianity and are more social reactions anyway shows that modern Christianity does not automatically oppose science at all. Nor do things like the Catholic rejection of the application of stem cell technology – which is no more a rejection of the science behind stem cell research than the Amish refusing to drive cars means they don’t believe in internal combustion in car engines.

So citing examples of conflict is not supporting the “Conflict Thesis”. You have a lot more work to do if you seriously want to try to do that.

But Tim is just clueless when it comes to evolution – why can’t science say something about teleology and souls? We know that these just don’t exist – it is a fact. Talk about fairy tales from a person who keeps harping about rationality!

If someone can show me how we can make a falsifiable and testable claim about a so-called “soul” and which branch of science would undertake such an analysis I’d be very interested. As I see it, “souls” are outside science in the same way “Santa Claus”, “leprechauns” and “unicorns” are. And we “know” souls don’t exist? Really? I must have missed the scientific announcment on that one. When did this certainty come about and how?

I have no belief in “souls” (or “leprechauns” and “unicorns” ) but to move from saying I find these highly ludicrously unlikely and that the “evidence” for them is pathetic to saying I “know” they don’t exist is a leap that this particular philosophy graduate is not going to make, for good reasons.

Just clocked in this morning to see if Tim was still ranting. Alas ,yes, so we can all click off again until it is Tim’s bedtime and normal rational discussion can resume. Meanwhile this ‘amateur’ has a lecture to preapare and proofs for my next Yale Up book to correct. Thank god I am not aprofessional historian, the workload is heavy enough as it is.

‘Police and an ambulance were standing by as a Suffolk man barricaded himself in a barn behind thousands of books after he had been ‘outed’ by an Australian ‘journalist’, Tim O’Neill, who exposed that,despite decades claiming to be a professional historian, Charles Freeman was an ‘amateur’.’We are seriously worried that Mr. Freeman might be crushed under a pile of books’ said a police spokesman, ducking when a copy of one God’s Philosophers was thrown out of the barn. The issue took an international dimension when the International Baccalaureate announced that it would now have to remark every exam paper marked by Mr. Freeman when he was posing as a Senior Examiner for their Theory of Knowledge course. Meanwhile Oxford University Press and Yale University Press are considering whether to withdraw his books. The prestigious Blue Guides series is issuing its own warning that the Historical Introductions to its Guides to Italy written by Charles Freeman should not be trusted. Meanwhile, an anonymous person who had been on a so-called ‘study tour’ of medieval Italy with Charles Freeman, was quoted as saying, ‘I swallowed all that stuff he told me about Italian history along with my pasta. Now I know the truth I shall be asking for my money back’. With Britain facing massive cuts in education, especially in the humanities, and university departments having to increasingly rely on funds from US organisations, this is another major blow to Britain’s credibility as a provider of top-level work in history. Meanwhile Tim O’Neill is unrepentant. In an 80,000 word press release, the argument of which is difficult to summarise, Mr. O’Neill said that ‘he would knock the s— out of anyone who attempted to defend Freeman.’

Meanwhile we hear that Mr. Freeman’s wife, Lydia, has talked him out of his barricade with a bowl of her famous home-made soup. ‘To think that i thought all along that my husband was a professional historian’, she told reporters,’ but I will stand by him whatever’. ‘It’s when i can’t get into his study because of the number of the books on the floor that I begin to worry’.

Just a snippet from an article on John Polkinghorne after he had won the Templeton Prize in 2002.

‘The Templeton Prize is awarded by the Templeton Foundation, which was set up by Wall Street financier John Templeton in 1972. Recognized as the world’s best known religion prize, it is awarded each year to a living person “to encourage and honour those who advance spiritual matters”. Polkinghorne says he will use the money to fund post-doctoral research into science and religion at Cambridge. “Theology, like any other subject, needs financial support,” he says.’

I think the links here are beginning to get stronger. It is interesting that he makes no bones about this being ‘theology’. My favourite Polkhornism comes from his One World published by a hitherto unknown publisher called ‘The Templeton Foundation Press’ in 2007 (p.91). Polkinghorne is discussing whether our bodies will be resurrected. ‘ After a few years of nutrition and wear and tear, the atoms that make us up have nearly all been replaced by equivalent successors. It is the pattern that they form which constitutes the physical expression of our continuing personality. There seems no difficulty in conceiving of that pattern, dissolved at death, being recreated in another environment in an act of resurrection. In terms of a very crude analogy, it would be like transforming the software of a computer program ( the pattern of our personality) from one piece of hardware (our body in this world) to another ( the body in the world to come), Scientifically this seems a coherent idea.’

I think comment is unnecessary but I would love to see the intellectual quality required to qualify for research money from the Polkinghorne fund if the standard is set at this level.

P.S. The home-made soup was great,as Lydia’s always is. Now I have to answer the question of where the (limited) income I have comes from if it is not from my work as a professional historian.

‘Meanwhile Policewoman Sharon Coot (23) had been asked to read God’s Philosophers to see whether it could provide any insight on the case. ‘To be honest’, she said,’it was a real eye-opener. Normally at the end of a long night-shift when we sit round in the police canteen discussing medieval history and theology, we think that the Middle Ages was a pretty barbaric place. One of my fellow officers actually said they burned people alive. And down in Rome, they had a great system, which he thought we might use here, of rattling some torture instruments. It worked well on the elderly, I understand.They would sign anything, even if it was about how the universe worked. Well, God’s Philosophers shows that this was all wrong. It was a great time to be a scientist! There were all kinds of grants available in the universities thanks to the Catholic Church, probably better than there are now. And they had peer-reviewed books with a special list called the Index if your science was not good enough. Very helpful if you wanted to keep your mind pure. Mind you, I have been asked to send God’s Philosophers for a second opinion from the specialists in science and religion at Cambridge University, but I am sure they will agree with me that it is a great book. Our conversations in the canteen will never be the same again. It’s nominalism on the discussion board tonight if the local bad guys will give us the peace to get on with it.’

As I see it, “souls” are outside science in the same way “Santa Claus”, “leprechauns” and “unicorns” are. And we “know” souls don’t exist? Really? I must have missed the scientific announcment on that one. When did this certainty come about and how?

LOL; presumably when a child tells you she knows that Santa Claus doesn’t exist you’d tell her she had insufficient epistemic justification, and she should tell her playmates not to be so dismissive of that which is outside science?

To say that we ‘know’ something doesn’t require certainty (as your philosophy studies surely taught you) else we would have to dismiss this entire thread as worthless. I’m inclined to allow that you’know’ some history, but you are surely not certain of it?

Excellent satire Charles! You are probably right, and the only thing to do at this stage is to indulge in mockery. And Tim, clearly, is as good a butt of jokes as we’re likely to find here on Butterflies and Wheels! However, I can’t forbear trying to pretend that the man is serious, and thinks that he knows. For instance, there is this:

[The Conflict Thesis states that] there is a permanent and comprehensive epistomological clash between religion and science. In other words, religion always opposes scientific developments as a matter of course.

As I say, I’m inclined to agree with Charles here. Since Tim is still ranting there’s not much point in continuing to comment, and making a joke might be more germane. However, I don’t think that Tim understands what he means by the conflict thesis, and it’s worthwhile pointing that out. If the conflict thesis holds that religion always opposes scientific developments, then it is true to say that there is no conflict, because many scientific developments do not threaten religious belief, it is not always clear in what way scientific developments threaten religious belief, and some religious believers are quite prepared to live with the tension of conflicting beliefs because (i) they have found ways of defusing the tension to their own satisfaction, (ii) they have compartmentalised their minds so they do not notice the tension, or (iii) they are still looking for the magic formula that will show a consistency between religious beliefs and scientific discovery, since it is held that a god’s revelation cannot be inconsistent with what it has created. I know of no one who claims that there is always an opposition between religion and science.

This does not mean, however, that there is not a fundamental epistemological conflict between science and religion, nor that science and religion have not come to blows at nodal points in this conflict. It is, for example, reasonably clear, that secular democratic forms of governance are preferable ways of organising society, and keeping a reasonable degree of peace and order within society. People flourish more when they are free and when their rights to certain freedoms is respected. Yet the church still typically thinks that it has a better way. Benedict XVI travelling around Europe, bemoaning secular freedoms, is an example of the kinds of conflict that continue to plague us because of the church’s idea that it knows the truth and that that truth will set us free. Not so. The church’s freedom is anyone else’s tyranny.

We can see this, for example, in relation to biblical studies, which has had a very tumultuous relationship with the church. There is a enormous reluctance by the church — even, in many cases, liberal churchmen and women — to follow biblical criticism to the end of the argument. Despite the fact that biblical criticism iteself relativises texts, the churches still want to claim a kind of epistemological priority for the ‘sacred’ text as revelatory. This cannot help but be in serious conflict with the discipline of biblical criticism and interpretation. Despite fairly clear evidence of conflict within the texts themselves — consider, for example, the stories of the resurrection of Jesus — Christians have not dropped their insistance that a man who was crucified in first century Palestine actually rose, miraculously, from the grave. And we must not think that, if they had the authority, the churches would not make a denial of that claim subject to civil penalty, just as such a denial would be grounds for discipline and dismissal of clergy. These are conflicts the existence of which Tim would apparently deny. He would pass over without comment the fact that David Friedrich Strauss, because of the publication of his magisterial Das Leben Jesu, had made himself virtually unemployable, or that of Church of England clergy who brought German biblical criticism to England, many lay under suspicion for the rest of their lives, and some, indeed, were subject of serious sanction. In the Roman church the sanctions were more serious, and many, like Alfred Loisy, were forced out of the church. Tim may say that biblical criticism is not a science, but in this he is simply wrong: it is a critical rational discipline which more obviously conflicts with Christianity than other sciences, many of which are poorly understood by those with authority in religious institutions.

Galileo is important to an understanding of the conflict between religion and science for quite simple reasons. He came at the beginning of the scientific revolution, and his treatment raised questions about the freedom of science from religion which were not adequately answered until it was clear that science had developed into an independent discipline over which the church could not have a significant degree of control, even though intemperate outbursts, like the Vatican denunciation of this years Nobel prize for medicine, show that it still hasn’t learned this lesson. But it must not be forgotten that, even so, after Galileo, the centre of gravity of scientific investigation shifted northwards, out of the reach of the Roman church, where there was a greater degree of freedom from theological intervention. It is surely not by chance that a large number of English scientists, though Christian, were not orthodox. Many of them belonged to marginal dissenting groups, and held highly unorthodox beliefs which tended towards Arianism and Deism. Newton’s curious theological preoccupations are a good example of this.

Tim says that:

The fact that the Creationist/ID movements represent a (noisy) minority within modern Christianity and are more social reactions anyway shows that modern Christianity does not automatically oppose science at all.

It really is amazing how someone who claims to have studied these things in detail can be so blind to some plain facts. The noisy minority that Tim refers to is, I suspect, much more in the nature of a majority. The stats from the US and elsewhere seem to indicate this. Believers who think of science and religion as in conflict may be uneducated. They may be zealous and simple minded about faith, but they often represent the mainstream of Christian belief. On what evidence would Tim like to stand here? Does he take John Polkinghorne as a representative Christian? Surely not. Indeed, Tim’s rather confident statement expresses precisely the kinds of conflict between religion and science that are a continuing problem for critical rational thought.

Oh, I almost forgot. Tim, you did not take me up on my request to recommend one of your books on this subject. I assume, having been a student of the relationships between science and religion, particularly during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, I assume you have committed your knowledge to print. So, a book where you have demonstrated what you call the consensus view of those who know about these things?

@ Michael Fugate sorry about that. Looks like I was attempting some kind of crude anglicisation of your surname – which I believe is also an anglicisation of La Fougate. Mine happens to be an anglicisation of O’Cleirigh.

@ Ophelia – I think whatever I argue with respect to the torture I’m going to end up looking pretty bad indeed. However – putting my lawyer hat on for a second – the definition has to be extremely broad since it has to cover incidents of extreme interrogation or incidents where white noise (or in the case of Guantanamo, recordings of Barney the dinosaur!) are played to prisoners in order to break them. Looking at the transcript, it doesn’t look like Galileo was shown the instruments of torture, instead it was territio verbalis. The relevant passage of the Disposition is:

Having been told that from the book itself and the reasons advanced for the affirmative side, namely that the earth moves and the sun is motionless, he is presumed, as it was stated, that he holds Copernicus’s opinion, or at least that he held it at the time, therefore he was told that unless he decided to proffer the truth, one would have recourse to the remedies of the law and to appropriate steps against him.

A: I do not hold this opinion of Copernicus, and I have not held it after being ordered by injunction to abandon it. For the rest, here I am in your hands; do as you please.

And he was told to tell the truth; otherwise one would have recourse to torture.

A: I am here to obey, but I have not held this opinion after the determination was made, as I said.

This is the part where torture is alleged – the process of Galileo being asked questions by the committee and being informed of the legal implications of not co-operating. Torture is threatened but as something of a legal formality – recall the out of court settlement agreed previously so the anguish he would felt would have stemmed from the possibility his former friend Pope Urban might be looking to up his sentence. Whether it counts as torture is going to turn on the word ‘severe’ – I don’t think the mental suffering in this case is great enough to constitute falling within the definition (he knows from previous proceedings he has to make the appropriate responses to avoid the worst – but it certainly arguable.

Why is this at all important if we all agree that the treatment Galileo received was dreadful ? Well for about 250 years – in the absence of access to the archives – it was thought that he was thrown into the Inquisition’s dungeons and tortured and this was disseminated in anti-catholic propaganda. So Maurice A Finocchiaro isn’t trying to indulge in apologetics as has been alleged – he’s just trying to sort myth from reality.

Good stuff,Eric. I am afraid Tim brings out my mischievous side. It is just so ludicrous to call someone who has been making a living professionally out of history for almost forty years an amateur that one has to make a joke out of it. I still have the feeling that Tim thinks we take him seriously. On Hannam’s Quodlibeta (it speaks volumes that Hannam is happy to let him have his say there) he is saying that he has clearly made me very cross. I love it.

Perhaps now is the time for Ophelia to bring this all together so that we can summarise what we know about Templeton and about the Hannam crowd. Obviously I don’t want it forgotten that I started this whole thing off because God’s Philosophers fails so miserably on academic grounds. The question of how they organise their response to critics arose later but it was good that we had such a clear-cut example of the collaboration between Hannam and O’Neill from the Facebook entry. My original critique is there for all to see on the New Humanist – I just don’t want it to be overlooked.

Meanwhile coming to a bookstore near you, courtesy of the celebratd Regnery press, the acclaimed Genesis of Science by one James Hannam!.

It’s very strange — if Hannam’s point of view is, as has been claimed, the consensus view amongst historians of science — that he should have chosen a press which lists itself on Google as “the leading conservative publisher in America.” One would have thought, if this really is the consensus view, that it would attract some of the better known university or scholarly publishers. It would be interesting to know why, in fact, Regnery publishing is Hannam’s publisher of choice.

One of the more conservative historians of science is Edward Grant. Actually i quite like him as he does not make too great a claim for medieval ‘science’ and his latest book `Science and Religion ( which I have reviewed on Amazon) while having some surprising omissions is quite useful. (Why do these people always leave out Italy- it is like writing a book on the western economies and missing out the US?) If there is one man Hannam claims to follow it is Grant. So I deliberately used Grant as a basis for my critique. Perhaps the most devastating blow for Hannam is that Grant, in the Introduction to Science and Religion sees Galileo as the man who was most dismissed the natural philosophers. As Grant puts it, p. 11. ” Galileo had great respect for Aristotle, but only contempt for the scholastic natural philosophers who, he was convinced, mindlessly followed him. More than anyone else, Galileo shaped the [negative] judgments about medieval scholastics for the centuries that followed’. In contrast, Hannam, p.335, ‘To historians who want to learn where Galileo and Kepler found their ideas, medieval natural philosophy is indispensable’ . As Hannam provides virtually no evidence to back up his assertion,which is perhaps the central argument of the whole book, it is just one of many moments when his book fails completely. (See my two critiques on the new Humanist blog for more supporting detail.) So I think that if Hannam differs from even his conservative mentor, then one can hardly argue that he is popularising accepted views. The most bizarre thing is that Grant actually endorsed Hannam’s book – that I really can’t explain.

So Hannam’s book is genuinely out in the cold. It has a clear bias towards the support of Catholicism. It makes extraordinary assertions against even mild ‘liberals’ such as Erasmus and is unbelievable about Giordano Bruno. I can only imagine that the US readers who considered it, realised this and were independent enough to ignore the UK reviews. Hence it found its own level with Regnery who spotted one of their own. For me, it all fits together quite neatly but i did not realise until recently quite how scary the Regnery list was.

Yes – Regnery is simply a thoroughly tainted brand. It was mixed up in the “impeach Bill Clinton” nonsense, which means it’s seen as a tool of far-right Republicans rather than a real publisher. I should think Hannam would have been better off self-publishing than going with Regnery. Not least I should think no one but very conservative publications will review the book.

I have no belief in “souls” (or “leprechauns” and “unicorns” ) but to move from saying I find these highly ludicrously unlikely and that the “evidence” for them is pathetic to saying I “know” they don’t exist is a leap that this particular philosophy graduate is not going to make, for good reasons.

Hannam asserts that ‘To historians who want to learn where Galileo and Kepler found their ideas, medieval natural philosophy is indispensable’. I’m afraid this is correct. Some examples. Referring to Grant’s ‘God and reason in the Middle Ages’ – p136 – William of Heytesbury (1313 – 1372) gave sound definitions of uniform motion and uniform acceleration and made the earliest known statement of the mean speed theorem. Grant writes ‘Galileo employed it in this form and in virtually the same manner’ p137.

He then goes on to say ‘Although Heytesbury only enunciated the mean speed theorem and did not prove it, numerous arithmetic and geometric proofs of this theorem were presented during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Galileo did not greatly improve upon these definitions or the proof of the mean speed theorem, which he used in his great and famous work, The Two New Sciences’ – he applied the mean speed theorem to naturally falling bodies and devised an experiment to determine if bodies fell with uniform acceleration.

Moving on, John Buridan, Albert of Saxony and Marsilius of Inghen all invoked a similar thought experiment to deny a moment of rest p 169. Marsilius writes

‘The proof is that if a bean (fabba) were projected upward against a millstone (molarem) which is descending, it does not appear probable that the bean could rest before descending, for if it did rest through some time it would stop the millstone from descending, which seems impossible.

Galileo repeats the same argument in On Motion.

Similarly Galileo’s discussion of Projectile Motion builds on the conclusions of Buridan, Tartaglia and Cardan. His observations on falling objects repeat those made a thousand years earlier by the Byzantine scholar John Philoponus and more recently by Simon Stevin.

Despite building on this legacy Galileo speaks out against the scholastic tradiion – why? Grant writes (p310) ‘Galileo’s reports should not be seen as also representative of behavior by scholastic natural philosophers in the late Middle Ages. Such an interpretation would be a gross distortion of the realities. It is well attested that medieval natural philosophers diverged from Aristotle on many points of natural philosophy. Moreover, they frequently criticized his conclusions, basing their arguments on reason and the testimony of the senses.’

As to the wider conclusion Grant writes (p356)

What made it possible for western civilization to develop science and the social sciences in a way that no other civilization had ever done before? The answer, I am convinced, lies in a pervasive and deep-seated spirit of inquiry that was a natural consequence of the emphasis on reason that began in the Middle Ages. With the exception of revealed truths, reason was enthroned in medieval universities as the ultimate arbiter for most intellectual arguments and controversies. It was quite natural for scholars immersed in a university environment to employ reason to probe into subject areas that had not been explored before, as well as to discuss possibilities that had not previously been seriously entertained….

(p364) The idea, and the habit, of applying reason to resolve the innumerable questions about our world, and of always raising new questions, did not come to modern science from out of the void. Nor did it originate with the great scientific minds of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the likes of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, and Newton. It came out of the Middle Ages from many faceless scholastic logicians, natural philosophers, and theologians, in the manner I have described in this study. It is a gift from the Latin Middle Ages to the modern world, a gift that makes our modern society possible, though it is a gift that may never be acknowledged. Perhaps it will always retain the status it has had for the past four centuries as the best-kept secret of Western civilization.

The answer, I am convinced, lies in a pervasive and deep-seated spirit of inquiry that was a natural consequence of the emphasis on reason that began in the Middle Ages. With the exception of revealed truths, reason was enthroned in medieval universities as the ultimate arbiter for most intellectual arguments and controversies. [emphasis added]

The “exception” simply nullifes the whole claim. The acceptance of the idea of “revealed truths” (which means “truths” immune to inquiry, doubt, testing, contradiction, falsification, requests for evidence) means that reason is not being used in any meaningful sense. It’s all or nothing. If you use reason for finding your keys and knowing how to get to your workplace but believe in magic otherwise, you’re not rational. A partial, qualified, ring-fenced use of reason is not an emphasis on reason or an enthronement of reason, it’s just a jumble.

LOL; presumably when a child tells you she knows that Santa Claus doesn’t exist you’d tell her she had insufficient epistemic justification, and she should tell her playmates not to be so dismissive of that which is outside science?

Er, no. I’d understand that she was speaking euphemistically and not making a scientific claim. Mr. Fugate, on the other hand, made the remarkable statement that not only were so-called “souls” within the reach of scientific investigation (how?) but that we can state scientifically that we “know” they don’t exist as a result. I’m still waiting for the details of the scientific investigation that has given us this remarkable level of assurance.

Michael Fugate

So, Tim you are now admitting you know nothing.

Eh? I’m noting that since we can make no observations or measurement of “souls”, “leprechauns” or “unicorns” we can’t make and test falsifiable statements about them. I’m reasonably certain that “souls”, “leprechauns” and “unicorns” don’t exist, given the lack of any form of evidence for them that I know of. But that is never going to be a scientific level of certainty because we can’t make and test falsifiable statements about them.

It’s certainly getting very weird that I have to explain the parameters of science to supposed rationalists. This is pretty elementary stuff.

You’re a witless, self-absorbed wanker. You seem to think you’re some kind of great wit, not to mention apparently the greatest medieval/renaissance scholar of all time. This to the extent that if someone even disagrees with you, all you think you need to do is dismiss their argument with a childish taunt while chiding the disputant for being so childish.

And you’re incredibly tedious. You don’t actually say anything except that everyone but you is ridiculous and obviously wrong. You don’t explain why you think your positions are built on such solid rock that you don’t even need to defend them. And you call this directionless name-calling and irrelevancy “scathing critique.”

Yes, you strike me as terribly sophisticated yourself. For example, you object here to a perfectly understandable common-sense usage of the word “know,” because as any sophisticated person knows, the word “know” can only be used by sophisticated people. Anyone else using the word “know” to indicate an intuitive and overwhelmingly probable point of fact is “naively blundering.”

Try this on, Mr. Sophisticated. To say “souls exist” is to say “there is some non-brain substance or entity that partially or wholly determines human behavior.” Since Descartes, that is what it has meant to assert that souls exist. And it is false. As far as anyone can tell, human behavior is entirely determined by neural activity — no neural activity, no behavior. No behavior, no neural activity. There’s no place in the loop for a magic machine. To the extent that “souls exist” is meant as anything but metaphor, it is quite simply false. (The falseness is, of course, as provisional as any scientific discovery.)

I would think that anyone who describes himself as a “rationalist” could follow this simple chain of reasoning. And realize that since 100% certainty is impossible, the word “know” is always meant provisionally (at least by true rationalists, who all realize that there is no 100% certainty and that all empirical truths are provisional). And, you know, actually offer some kind of argument in support of his own positions. Or even against an opponent’s position. I guess I’m saying that a real argument instead of baseless name-calling would be a good start if you want to start contributing to this conversation.

Of course, if you stopped the baseless name-calling, you wouldn’t be able to call yourself a “rationalist.” But you’re going to do whatever gets you off. That’s what a wanker does after all.

As a rationalist, I treat that kind of gibberish as the nonsense it is. And for this I’m now called a “troll”. It seems unless one bows to the common opinion around here one gets called all kinds of interesting names.

I would think the rational thing to do would be to understand what it is people are trying to say about the relationship between Templeton and historians of religion instead of leaping to the conclusion that they’re talking about the most bat-shit crazy, conspiracy theory version of the issue. Putting words in people’s mouths, making assumptions about their motivations…those things sound more like something a troll would do.

I’d understand that she was speaking euphemistically and not making a scientific claim.

Come on Tim, just for once make a bit of sense! I think Dan L scotchs your argument already, but, after all, when someone says that she knows that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, she is not speaking euphemistically (you might, with some profit to yourself, look it up). She is actually making a knowledge claim to the effect that, if we look for someone named Santa Claus who visits all the children of the world on Christmas Eve from his residence at the North Pole, we won’t find him. To children who finally discover this after being lied to by their parents for several years, this is an important point of discovery. They learn that there are all sorts of beliefs which are untrue, and there are ways of proving that they are untrue. Perhaps there is no knock-down proof of non-existence, but I’m sure any child who has come to the realisation that Santa Claus does not exist could suggest several empirical checks, aside from speaking about the logistical impossibility of what this imaginary being is supposed to do in just one night. Why would you belabour this is such a childish way. Presumably experts in the history of the Middle Ages have many more important things to do.

So Tim name one thing that cannot be defined, observed or measured that you or anyone else for that matter know to exist. You might also tell me one thing you know to be true with absolute certainty so I can see how a so-called rational mind works. For instance, If I said I know living things are composed of cells or living things share a common ancestor – two basic tenets of biology, would I be naively blundering?

What I am truly baffled by is this idea that religion has something to offer science. For instance, I read the first two chapters of Science and Religion: a historical introduction edited by Gary B. Ferngren. In chapter one The Conflict of Science and Religion, Colin Russell says the following:“Could what we know about the world through science be integrated with what we learn about it from religion?”

How exactly do we learn anything about the world from religion? What is the methodology that religion uses to learn about the world? And does it lead to knowledge or truth of any kind?

It seems to me that one could never be a scientist in the modern sense until he or she discarded revelation as a way of knowing. This is where the conflict always has been – which should one trust as being authoritative.

you object here to a perfectly understandable common-sense usage of the word “know,”

Ummm, no I don’t. I object to a use of the word “know” in the context of someone claiming that “souls” are within the purview of scientific analysis. I have no problem at all with someone saying that they “know” souls don’t exist, meaning that they are fairly sure of this. But to claim that we know this scientifically is simply nonsense. We don’t because we can’t.

To say “souls exist” is to say “there is some non-brain substance or entity that partially or wholly determines human behavior.” Since Descartes, that is what it has meant to assert that souls exist. And it is false. As far as anyone can tell, human behavior is entirely determined by neural activity

Fine. Except woo-believers have all kinds of metaphysical arguments as to how “souls” still exist despite the seeming evidence that human behaviour is purely determined by neural activity. You and I think that is unesscessary nonsense. But the issue here is that you and I can’t come up with a scientific way of definitively falsify their claims.

If you or Mr Fugate have come up with a way of doing so, of course, I will stand by to be astounded along with the rest of the scientific world. The claim was that the question of the existence of “souls” is within the purview of scientific analysis. Several people here seem to have lost sight of that in the rush to assure me that I am wrong about absolutely everything. Very odd behaviour for rationalists …

I would think the rational thing to do would be to understand what it is people are trying to say about the relationship between Templeton and historians of religion instead of leaping to the conclusion that they’re talking about the most bat-shit crazy, conspiracy theory version of the issue.

Is Locutus7’s nonsense about a Vatican keyword alert program and a flying squad of apologists and faux atheists part of the “bat-shit crazy, conspiracy theory version of the issue”? That aside, the idea that the old Conflict Thesis has been abandoned by current historians of early science of all stripes because of some kind of back channel funding by the Templeton Foundation IS “bat-shit crazy”. And Ms Benson triumphantly pointing out a handful of rather unremarkable “religion-friendly” links to a few historians of early science does not prove this weirdly irrational theory.

As for the epistemological incompatibility between religion and science, it’s pretty simple.

Imagine something that was in every way like a religion, except that it made no truth claims about human behavior (or anything else) or the truth of any particular propositions about the natural worlds. It declares nothing sacred; it imposes no dogma on its adherents, and only commits to ethical positions that can be justified through completely secular arguments.

Are we still talking about a religion?

The epistemological incompatibility between religion and science stems from precisely those characteristics of religion that compel us to say that Rotary and the Boy Scouts of America (for example) aren’t religions. Established religions can’t be separated from the truth claims they make about human behavior, or from the ad hoc moral codes they try to impose. And those are in turn predicated on (often implicit) metaphysical assumptions about the nature of the universe and humanity. If religious epistemology was compatible with scientific epistemology, then established religions would treat their own claims like scientific claims. They would make the claims precise enough so as to make a definite experimental prediction. If the prediction was not borne out, the claim would be dismissed (or, more realistically, argued about some more until a bunch more experiments were carried out).

Religion, by its nature, has to make metaphysical claims about the universe; the problem is no less acute if the religion only makes claims about human behavior. If it’s not making metaphysical claims, then it’s just a social club.

Let’s take Christianity as an example, since that one is often argued to be compatible with religion in some sense. Christianity is predicated on the narrative that Christ died to absolve humanity of original sin. Here we have several metaphysical claims: there is something called sin and we all have it. This only makes sense if the Adam and Eve story or something like it is true. And there’s good indication that is not the case.

So without Adam, what is original sin? Why do we have it? Why should moral guilt pass through bloodlines anyway? What’s the mechanism? How is moral guilt instantiated — i.e. what is sin generally? It’s talked about as if it’s a substance. Is there a way to measure it? And if this is all just airy-fairy metaphor, then what the hell is Christ supposed to be saving us from?

Or religious claims are all just metaphors. But in that case, religion has no normative power in terms of ethics, which, as far as I can tell, defeats the whole point of religion in the first place.

Oh, I almost forgot. Tim, you did not take me up on my request to recommend one of your books on this subject.

Ummm, I leave the publication of books on this stuff to the experts and professional scholars. Like Freeman and Hannam, I’m just an amateur. An excellent anthology of articles by real academics (you know, peer-reviewed works written by people working within the world of genuine scholarly analysis at proper research institutions) would be God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers eds. Give that a read. On the subject of Medieval natural philosphy and its relation to science there’s Edward Grant The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages:Their Religious, Institutional and Intellectual Contexts and God and Reason in the Middle Ages as well as Lindberg’s magisterial The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450.

Hannam simply popularises for the general reader what these giants in the field have been saying for decades, since Grant, Lindberg and Numbers tend to write more for specialists.

Fine. Except woo-believers have all kinds of metaphysical arguments as to how “souls” still exist despite the seeming evidence that human behaviour is purely determined by neural activity. You and I think that is unesscessary nonsense. But the issue here is that you and I can’t come up with a scientific way of definitively falsify their claims.

Ooooh, how sophisticated…::gag::

To have claimed something, you need to state up front how you being correct is different from you being incorrect. I.e. what experiment can we do to determine whether you’re correct or incorrect. If after being proven incorrect, you make ad hoc excuses about why, those are separate claims from the (falsified) original claim.

Claims about souls have been discredited probably tens of thousands of times throughout history, if not more. If religion worked like science, that would have falsified the notion of souls — science has to keep track of negative results as well as positive. The soul theory of human behavior is falsified. Yes, people can make ad hoc excuses about why previous soul claims were wrong, but they’re making new claims which, if they make any predictions at all, can also be falsified.

This, by the way, is one more reason science and religion are epistemologically incompatible.

I don’t answer for locutus. Trying to imply that I’m responsible for defending his point of view is just one more datum in favor of you being a troll.

To have claimed something, you need to state up front how you being correct is different from you being incorrect. I.e. what experiment can we do to determine whether you’re correct or incorrect. If after being proven incorrect, you make ad hoc excuses about why, those are separate claims from the (falsified) original claim.

Yes, that tends to be how they work. But the fact remains that these “souls” they talk about simply don’t have attributes that can be subjected to experiment, so the best a scientist can do is shake his head and say “It sounds like you are simply defining ‘souls’ in a way that means they can’t be proven or disproven.” That may be a good reason to hold no belief in souls, but the fact remains that concepts like “souls” (like “leprechauns”) are, by their alleged nature, outside of the purview of science. As I’ve said from the start.

Why don’t you leave the judgment about qualifications and consensus within the field to the experts and professional scholars as well?

Nice non sequitur. Why can’t I make that judgement for myself? What’s that got to do with me considering it pointless for me to write books on things that the experts have already covered far better than I ever could?

I’d understand that she was speaking euphemistically [?] and not making a scientific claim.

No, I disagree; as others have noted, she’s making an ontological claim. So is Santa real, or not? Only science has provided anything close to a reliable method for claims about reality, so it is a claim that science passes judgement on, simply through lack of evidence. Santa shares the same lack of evidence with an infinite number of other things that don’t exist. This doesn’t mean he categorically doesn’t exist, any more than the gackleflump doesn’t exist; it’s just that it would be unreasonable to conclude anything other than that he doesn’t exist, given what we currently ‘know’.

So it’s reasonable to say we know that Santa, the gackleflump and souls don’t exist, even if, with scientific contingency in mind, this cannot be an absolute claim. We can’t always put the small print in with the large print; it’s just impractical.

I’m noting that since we can make no observations or measurement of “souls”, “leprechauns” or “unicorns” we can’t make and test falsifiable statements about them.

Some philosophers do agree with you on this, although it looks like it’s begging the question to me; they allow that something can be placed beyond science simply by the person making the claim saying it is beyond science, or supernatural. It throws out some real conundrums. The claim is that these things cannot be observed or measured and yet somehow we know they cannot be observed or measured? If there’s a rationale for the category distinction I’ve never heard it; without a rationale, the claim is arbitrary. Arbitrariness would also be indicated by contradictory claims; and there are contradictory claims.

We’ve had many debates on the exact status of the supernatural, so I don’t want to start all that again, but I wonder: presumably you let historians claim that some events are beyond historical investigation too, if you allow that some ontological claims are beyond science? How do you ever determine what’s happened? You would presumably never deny a miracle occurred, for example, however much evidence to the contrary was presented?

Improve your tone if you want to go on commenting here. I’m not going to let this place fill up with your belligerence.

What “belligerence” would that be? I’ve done nothing more than make a couple of wry asides. I certainly haven’t posted whole posts of outright mockery like Freeman (nor did I respond) and I certainly haven’t posted anything that begins “You’re a witless, self-absorbed wanker”! Will they be threated as well or is this a weirdly selective indignation on your part?

This smells like an attempt to silence someone who isn’t sticking to the party line. Rather sinister.

The belligerence that you started with, in your first comments. That put you on thin ice, and you now have to be scrupulously civil to make up for it, if you want to keep commenting here. You get less slack than other people do because you were so obnoxious at the outset. Sad, isn’t it.

This point of Humphrey’s a while back struck me as unfortunate, and I thought I’d point this out.

However the Catholic Church was not opposing science per se. It was used[sic] its authority to endorse what was then the consensus of the scientific community.

This is actually precisely the problem was, no? The accusation against the church was not that it was opposing scientific inquiry per se, but that it was defending certain propositions regarding the natural world in a way that prevented honest rational inquiry. To mandate that “Your conclusions may not conflict with X.” is necessarily to prevent any honest inquiry into X, whether scientific or not, and, indeed, whether or not X is actually a reasonable conclusion. In this sense, to mandate belief in the scientific consensus is as blatantly an attack on the actual practice of science as to mandate belief in an unscientific conclusion (perhaps more so, in that some unscientific conclusions may be untestable and therefore irrelevant to science).

It strikes me that there’s often a sort of confusion here between the intentions of a person or group of people (in the mind of the Church, to uphold God’s truth and accepted science), and the actual effects of their actions (in the case of Galileo and other suspected or convicted heretics, to suppress honest inquiry and the truth about the natural world). The Church was perfectly capable of inhibiting science as an institution while believing itself to be “helping” rational inquiry. In fact, I think it does so today. When the Vatican releases a statement tentatively saying that it’s compatible with Catholic dogma for extraterrestrial life to exist, no doubt that’s a superficially science-compatible, even science-friendly statement. But in fact it implies that they could reasonably have released the opposite statement, and thereby attempted to harangue Catholics into denying any evidence for extraterrestrial life.

The idea that the Vatican can tell the (supposedly billion-strong) population of Catholics what they are allowed to believe is necessarily in conflict with any authority-independent epistemology, and this is reflected in Vatican statements and policy. I think the only historical questions here are how badly this impacted the development of science, and to what degree the Church may have made up for it via support for academic institutions and the like.

Upon reflection, what I said may very well be compatible with Humphrey Clarke’s apparent stance in the quoted paragraph, but it’s not really clear. I stand by the substance of what I said though, if not the implication about him.

Upon reflection, what I said may very well be compatible with Humphrey Clarke’s apparent stance in the quoted paragraph

This is correct. The effect of the Galileo trial was that opposition against heliocentrism was maintained in Jesuit astronomy until the middle of the eighteenth century. At this point – having previously defended the Tychronic system – they switched over. In terms of impact, Ptolemy, Tycho Brahe and Copernicus were used as hypotheses – the prohibition was that you could not hold the motion of the earth proposed by Copernicus as real. So the consequences were negative although it should be noted that the Copernican system was not wholly accepted by European astronomers during the period in question. Jesuit astronomy did make many important contributions in the observation of the moon, stars, comets etc.. Much of the running in the scientific revolution was done by Protestants but much of the data on geography, flora, fauna, mineralogy, astronomy, meteorology and seismology was done by Catholics, mainly because of the far flung Catholic missions.

The Galileo chapter seems much less apologetic than the Bruno chapter does. The account of what the church did do is plenty damning enough (I find it revolting to read), and there isn’t the same matter-of-fact acceptance of the notion of “heresy.” It reads like straightforward revision rather than apologetics.

Yes, that tends to be how they work. But the fact remains that these “souls” they talk about simply don’t have attributes that can be subjected to experiment, so the best a scientist can do is shake his head and say “It sounds like you are simply defining ‘souls’ in a way that means they can’t be proven or disproven.” That may be a good reason to hold no belief in souls, but the fact remains that concepts like “souls” (like “leprechauns”) are, by their alleged nature, outside of the purview of science. As I’ve said from the start.

No, the notion of “souls” and “leprechauns” are not by their alleged nature outside the purview of science. There are plenty of particular claims about souls and leprechauns that can (and have) been disproven scientifically. It’s only AFTER this happens that NEW allegations are made about the nature of souls and leprechauns.

“Soul” and “leprechaun” are just sounds unless they’re actually used to mean something. And if they’re used to mean something — a particular something, not an amorphous something, which would really amount to a nothing — then claims about them can be falsified.

You’re just playing the role of Humpty Dumpty here — you say that “soul” can mean whatever the speaker likes, and thus there’s no way for science to get a handle on the concept. But Humpty Dumpty is supposed to be a parody of deep thinking, not an example of it. Since Descartes (and I hate to repeat myself, but apparently I have to) “soul” has meant an immaterial substance which is the manifestation of the moral and emotional life of a person. You’re saying, “well it doesn’t HAVE to mean that.” But by convention it does. If you want to talk about a NEW concept ALSO called soul, then say so explicitly. But that’s an entirely new claim and it does not retroactively unfalsify the more common conception of the existence of souls.

Nice non sequitur. Why can’t I make that judgement for myself? What’s that got to do with me considering it pointless for me to write books on things that the experts have already covered far better than I ever could?

Obviously you can make the judgment for yourself. And then you can keep it to yourself.

Alternatively, you can preface it with “in my opinion,” or you can support the assertion with argument and evidence. My point is simply that you haven’t established that your assertion is anything but the result of your own biases and because of that, you should put up or shut up.

Logic doesn’t seem to be a strong suit around here.

You’re right, but that’s just because you’ve made a plurality of the comments on this thread.

@OB:

Improve your tone if you want to go on commenting here. I’m not going to let this place fill up with your belligerence.

I think it’s fair if he wants to be a dick to me. I’ve been being a dick to him. But your house, your rules. (I’ll try to tone it down too.)

We can’t always put the small print in with the large print; it’s just impractical.

Yes, Mark Jones makes a good point here, and it is another sense in which Tim is playing Humpty Dumpty. When I say “I know that souls don’t exist,” I’m using “know” in the completely reasonable sense that, according to my current understanding of the world, the expression that follows “I know that” is one that I find overwhelmingly probable. I don’t need to be 100% to be certain, because otherwise I would literally know nothing. “Know” would be a useless word if it could only be used in cases of 100% certainty. Most people don’t have a problem with all this implicit epistemology, but apparently we need to go a little slower for Tim.